I’m learning a lot about many things during research, and one of them is about the “valued added” approach that’s being discussed a lot for use in teacher evaluation. And what I’m finding is leaving me deeply concerned about it.

I thought readers here might find it useful to see what I think are The Best Resources For Learning About The “Value-Added” Approach Towards Teacher Evaluation (please feel free to leave your comments and other suggestions in the comments section, too):

In a typical rating system aimed at identifying poorly performing teachers, one in four teachers whose performance is fine could be misidentified as bad. At the same time, teachers whose students underperform had a one in four chance of being mislabeled as average performers.

Assessing A Teacher’s Value is the headline of a New York Times feature that highlights four supporters and four critiques of the “value-added” approach of assessing teachers. Critics including Linda Darling-Hammond and Diane Ravitch.

Teacher Added-Value Scores: Publish and Perish is a very thoughtful analysis of the problems inherent in publishing the “value-added” assessments of teachers. It’s from the Albert Shanker Institute, and raises some issues I haven’t seen raised elsewhere.

Is D.C.’s teacher evaluation system rigged? is a guest post by Aaron Pallas at The Washington Post’s “Answer Sheet” blog. It makes some excellent points about the “value-added” assessment system for teachers, including some I hadn’t heard before.

Education writers from throughout the United States recently met in New Orleans, and I read their tweets about the conference. I was particularly interested in the session on the value-added approach to teacher evaluation, and found some excellent resources.

Whether naïfs or experts, mathematicians need to confront people who misuse their subject to intimidate others into accepting conclusions simply
because they are based on some mathematics. Unlike many policy makers, mathematicians are not bamboozled by the theory behind VAM, and they
need to speak out forcefully. Mathematical models have limitations. They do not by themselves convey authority for their conclusions. They are tools, not magic. And using the mathematics to intimidate—to preempt debate about the goals of education and measures of success—is harmful not only to
education but to mathematics itself.

was written by Roger Tilles, a member of the New York State Board of Regents, which supervises all educational activities within the state. post refers to action taken on Monday by the board, which adopted regulations for a teacher and principal performance evaluation system in which 20 to 40 percent of the evaluation is linked to student standardized test scores.

Here’s a short video on Twitter by Arthur Goldstein showing Charlotte Danielson, the present “guru” of teacher evaluation for many districts, saying that student test results should not be used in teacher evaluations:

At a time when the issue of teacher performance is a hot issue on both sides of the Atlantic, it is important to recognise that the relationship between teaching and learning is complex and will probably never be measurable through the use of simple formulae.
However, at the same time, the performance management of teachers does need to be backed up with sound evidence, collected appropriately and supported by sound arguments.
It surprises many in the UK that in the US teachers can be fired on the basis of their pupils’ test results, but what is more surprising is that educationalists have not mounted a more rigorous counter argument, or led the way to showing how teacher appraisal might be carried out more objectively.
The fault in the arguments that teacher performance equals pupils’ test scores lies in the failure to find a constant, that is, it assumes that all groups of pupils start off the same. One could make comparisons between two groups of learners if their starting points were identical, but if not then the task is much more complex.
In the UK there is currently a review of the body that inspects schools – Ofsted. There has been a consultation process about this – important because there is now a greater emphasis given to ‘The Importance of Teaching’ – the title of a new Education Bill.
One argument that I have offered is that we must separate ‘provision’ i.e. what a school provides, from ‘outcomes’, i.e. what pupils gain from the process. The quality of each of these should be judged separately using agreed criteria, before the issue of cause and effect is examined.
There is much more that can be said about this, but the point is that a proper scientific debate needs to take place in order that politicians cannot get away with making simplistic comments that can inappropriately affect the careers of many good teachers. The teaching profession needs to take a lead on this rather than complain at the injustice that can take place.
I have written about these issues in the broader context of how we use data to measure the performance of pupils, teachers and schools. This work can be examined at http://www.mikebostock.wordpress.com
Comments on any of these thoughts are welcomed.